Too Much Is Never Enough
@greg 's comment in the "Well that may be the end of eMu for me" thread, that he is taking a break from eMu to to catch up on music the he owns but hasn't listened to much or at all, has raised a question in my mind. When is your music collection too big to fully appreciate? This may be more an issue for the older members; who have come to realize that the amount of music listening time is becoming more and more limited.
I did a quick check of my digital library and determined that the average song length, in my collection, is 4:12. Which means, if I wanted to listen to every song in my collection at least once a year, the total amount of songs I can accommodate is 30,000. That assumes a song length of 4 minutes and that I spend as much time listening to music as devoted in a typical work week (40 hours/week with two weeks off [2000 hours]).
So, what happens once your active music collection totals more that 80+ days of listening time? Should you archive some of your music, equal in time, to the music you are adding (meaning you are not likely to listen to it again but you still own a copy)? Surely you shouldn't stop listening to new music but perhaps the rate of addition should significantly slow (and maybe focus on improving quality or expanding genres). If your collection expands well beyond what you have time to listen to with any frequency, can you really appreciate what you have? I'm sure there must be a name for the disease of accumulating a pile of stuff you will never have time to watch/read/listen to, ever (not sure it is the same as hoarding per se).
I did a quick check of my digital library and determined that the average song length, in my collection, is 4:12. Which means, if I wanted to listen to every song in my collection at least once a year, the total amount of songs I can accommodate is 30,000. That assumes a song length of 4 minutes and that I spend as much time listening to music as devoted in a typical work week (40 hours/week with two weeks off [2000 hours]).
So, what happens once your active music collection totals more that 80+ days of listening time? Should you archive some of your music, equal in time, to the music you are adding (meaning you are not likely to listen to it again but you still own a copy)? Surely you shouldn't stop listening to new music but perhaps the rate of addition should significantly slow (and maybe focus on improving quality or expanding genres). If your collection expands well beyond what you have time to listen to with any frequency, can you really appreciate what you have? I'm sure there must be a name for the disease of accumulating a pile of stuff you will never have time to watch/read/listen to, ever (not sure it is the same as hoarding per se).
Comments
- And I'm happy to catch up as little or as much as I can.
- So, no worries here
Actually that is a reference to the old MTV ad campaign (although I remember it as Jagger saying "Too Much Is Never Enough"):
I even taught myself how to say "I want my MTV" in American Sign Language. Which I thought made it a bit surreal.
For some bands, I am obsessive and try to get it all. Bob Dylan? 1302 items. Grateful Dead? 1373 items. Miles Davis? 662 items. John Coltrane? 296. Then I start tracking down side projects, early tracks, and it just goes on for a few weeks. So it goes.
I have gone through genre phases, so celtic was a big deal to me several years ago and I accumulated quite a bit, then bluegrass, etc. Then there was the Guvera Bluenote ECM windfall that added huge quantities of jazz and classical. Occasionally I drop one of those 100 best Mozart sets from Amazon. Then I find a source of less-than-legal John Zorn albums online. So it goes.
When I get a new album, I really do try to spin it a few times (maybe five or six times) to get into it. Sometimes that leads to tracking down the artist's catalog. For example, I have been through the new Sam Beam & Jesca Hoop album maybe five or six times, then I revisit Iron & Wine, then buy a couple of Jesca Hoop albums since I did not know here much before. So it goes.
So it ends up being a bit like collecting stamps, I need to have everything I can get even i I do not listen to it several times. But I do listen to everything for the most part.
I'm closer to Plong's way. My "too much" is the overwhelming physicality of it around me.
The tens of thousands of recordings in many different forms. This is why I've been going for the archive method in the last few years.
I think I remember a scene in "The Man Who Fell To Earth," which I haven't seen since it came out in the mid-70's, of Bowie placing some kind of round ball on a mechanism and having it play music (I could've imagined this) and I was so taken in by the idea of having the world's music in such a compact form that it's remained a strong wish since then.
So, because we consume music so differently these days, just having simple access to the world's music is closer than ever. Tho, I try on occasion to listen to Spotify thru an app that picks randomly from their millions of tunes, there's the sore reality that even if you are the most open person on earth to sound, there's still a huge amount of dreck that's produced due to financial rather than creative concerns. This is less of a problem with Bandcamp on random, I think, but you still get a whole lot of people who think they are good rappers instead of being truly creative rappers.
Anyway, I'm a big fan of random - and with 8 years of total playing time just in iTunes alone (if I listened only once to each "tune"), I don't see it as a challenge, but rather, a beautiful re-discovery of things played.
The physical collection is just added play-money after it hits eBay and the like.
This for me nails where an important distinction needs to be made, between a pile and a collection. A pile is ... a pile and if it is taking up space that should be less cluttered it is too much. A collection to me implies curation. Curation includes things like:
- deleting things as well as adding them
- placing some parts in storage while others are on display
- arranging things so that one is learning about connections and patterns
- enjoying the process of collecting and evaluating more than the raw counts
I am not saying I always live the ideal, but I am more interested in having a collection than a pile. This includes some of what Plong42 was saying about wanting to hear and understand a specific artist exhaustively - if the goal is a thorough grasp (/hearing/understanding/enjoyment/other noun) of John Coltrane (or Tetsu Inoue) then the answer to 'should I add this obscure album' actually has very little to do with the abstract question "how many tracks are there in total in my collection" any more than the answer to the question "should I watch the next Star Wars film" or "should I read the next volume of Game of Thrones" generally has very much to do with "how many books have I read/films have I watched". In other words, approaching this just in terms of size of collection seems to assume too much that the number of tracks represents a heap of equivalent units, rather than a collection of storylines many of which are still going forward.
I try to trim things every now and then where there seem to be dead ends. But I also have times that are kind of like the museum pulling things out of storage for a special exhibit. I recently went back and listened to almost every Neal Morse album (none of which are on spotify). Then it was Coleman Hawkins. The collection allows me to do that, to delve intentionally. In a museum you can't look at everything at once - much of it is in storage. But that is what enables coherent exhibits. So I am not sure total listening time is the real issue.
I cannot deny that I have a tendency to hoard for the sake of it and often buy things that were not necessary when it comes to music. I think I am still overreacting to teenage years filled with passion for music and no money. But it still feels odd to ask "is the pile too big" - it's too much like asking "does Hamlet have too many pages" or "should I read Macbeth if I have already read Hamlet". It is possible to debate that but it seems to be missing the point.
tl:dnr: it's not a pile.
Your approach to purchasing music focused on an artist or genre makes sense to me. What I have ended up doing, because I've documented a large wishlist, is sort of randomize my purchases by focusing on whatever the current bargains available in my wishlist happen to be.
I struggle with this also. However, it's not just all the the music in the world, it is all the music ever recorded as well. This is were I have found the Rate Your Music site helpful. Now that I have found a number of people who's musical tastes are similar to mine, I can peruse their thoughts on a wide range of music to filter through not only the "dreck" but also music that isn't likely to appeal to my tastes or unexpectedly might be appealing; on a deeper level than simply my own screening by artists or genre.
I am completely with you on random listening; and I have been for quite sometime, not sure why. Just as colors look different based on what other color they are next to, different aspects of songs can come through when juxtaposition-ed with different music. Although that is just part of the attraction.
Eight years of music! My mind struggles to get my head around that. At the same time I'm jealous.
Your point about curation is an important distinction. It is unfortunate that the word "pile" seems to have hit a sore spot. By using that word, I was being a bit dramatic perhaps. I was trying to rope in all the other interests we have but perhaps don't completely focus on while still having an interest in committing time to (above and beyond commitments to work, family, sleep, etc.). I wasn't trying to imply that people's music collections are not cared for.
Using the word "curation" does bring to mind a museum. Museums are public so maybe not the best analogy. If you had your own private museum is it not possible to be too large for an individual to fully appreciate? Even a complete lifetime lived in the Louve doesn't seem like it would be enough time.
Walking through a gallery hall is one level of appreciation. The familiarity of knowing a painting you have seen pictures of and read about many times is another level. Then there is the deeper understanding of a painting that you have lived with for some time. That painting can become, not a friend perhaps but a fellow traveler.
Certainly time must be invested roaming the gallery halls, in order to spot items you deem worth further investigation. Then comes the reading about and repeated listening to get to the next level. I guess once you have spent several decades doing these things, I wonder if there is a point when you begin to short change the "fellow travelers" you have developed?
My problem is likely that I don't spent enough time "deleting things as well as adding them". More focus on curation, would help put a leash on the hoarding beast.
The completist itch is one part of the disease I've managed to avoid. With the exception the the Beatles official catalog. The Internet has enabled me to be much more selective than I ever was before; while at the same time greatly expanding my interests.
Sorry to hear about your health issue. Glad you have come out the other side. For me coming to the realization that even limited to my documented wish list, I will never have the resources or time to complete it (not to mention it will never stop growing) has made me start to look at my collection differently. It is helpful talking about it with you guys.
The problem I see in my own listening is similar but different, and I am trying to decide whether it merits changing my whole setup.
Right now I have a moderately complex system of smart playlists based on genres and play counts and ratings that gradually rotates my entire collection at varying speeds onto and off of my iPod touch. What works well in this is that stuff I rated highly gets more plays, the three star stuff gets fewer plays.
There are two downsides. The easier one is that it is not as good for what I called exhibits - listening to all of an artist for a few days. But I can handle that with occasional manual overrides.
The bigger question I keep coming to, that is related to the 'time is limited/I am going die' theme, is whether the benefits of a generous rotation (I get to hear stuff not heard in a long time and occasionally decide that three star album was really much better than I remembered) really outweigh the downside of less focus (I end up listening to mediocre albums when I could be giving something important another listen). In other words, with access to so much music, how much time should I spend giving another chance to stuff that I thought was just OK? Would there be any merit to the radical solution of deleting everything that has less than four stars?
I am not quite there yet, but I am thinking about designing a new way of rotating that worries less about playing everything regularly and more about concentrating on particular areas for a while at a time.
Also, this connection with paintings that was mentioned earlier: walking thru a gallery of visual work seems to me to take more time and effort than sound. Painting/sculpture/installations demand that you do just this one act of standing and seeing whereas sound "lets" you live your daily life doing other things while you drink the sounds in automatically - walking around the house or wherever you may be. It's also why I'm not a big movie or TV watcher. Books, on the other hand...ha!
For anyone who collects music it is hard to imagine viewing music as an "undifferentiated mass". My wife however, does lean toward predominately using music as audio wallpaper. Still certain songs will pop through and catch her attention. [maybe that is the real reason they call it "pop" music
I would be careful about leaning too hard on song ratings. Ratings do have a utility but they also give a false sense of precision. Rates tend to be static while our appreciation is fluid, based on mood and the context of the moment. I do occasionally up-rate things but seldom do I down-rate. I do reserve the use of a half star to flag songs that I'm unsure will grow on me enough to keep in my collection. A rating perhaps I should use much more often. Does iTunes allow the use of half stars yet? If not then those ratings are potentially even less accurate.
I think a big part of my struggle is deciding whether to give up on the idea of listening to every item in my collection somewhat regularly. My current goal is at least once a year. Another one of my auto-play lists I call "Bubbling Under". I use it to surface tracks I haven't listened to in a while; in my case regardless of rating.
I do really like to concept of "Exhibit" themes. I do have many playlists that support that idea. However, they tend to fall out of listening rotation over time. Which is as it should be, I guess. I've wished there was a way to document, beyond just the list name, what I was thinking when I created the themed list; to encourage revisiting the lists.
According to Wikipedia the Logitech gear you are referring to seems to have been discontinued. I can't tell from their description but I'm not sure if their network configuration requirements were more than I'm willing to get into.
Any product suggestions to broadcast a random stream from a PC music library to a speaker outdoors?
"Wow, that was a great set." - happens to me also; great stuff. Makes me wish/fantasize I was a DJ broadcasting at the time. "The radio DJ in me" - I'm with you there as well!
this is it here. you can download a PDF there for more info.
you have to have your desktop running for either outside your home stations
or your own personal (in my case iTunes) library.
the rest of the house gets streamed thru either a built-in iTunes ability
or thru Airfoil.
They don't explain how they are accessing the files on your PC but I assume they also utilize some server software connected to the wifi. Their Encore product looks like it might fit the bill.
Source: http://www.howtogeek.com/194332/htg-reviews-the-encore-eight-pounds-of-internet-radio-goodness-and-stellar-sound/
Update: my PC doesn't have bluetooth and the 30 ft range might be an issue. On a related note I saw a wireless speaker that levitates like the one @rostasi mentioned earlier (so yet again - the future is now):
Source: http://thesoundreviews.com/2016/04/27/music-angel-jh-fd19-levitating-portable-wireless-bluetooth-speakers-with-microphone-for-iphone-and-i/
Update 2: looks like it might make sense to use the streaming built into Windows 7 and stream to my wife's laptop and use the same speaker we use for the ipod.
We use a Logitech NXT speaker which it looks like you can still buy.